I think he means like take a metal cast of an actual nest and then turn that into an acrylic nest. Think like these but clear and hollow. I think it would be kind of cool, but hydration would be difficult.
https://www.buzzfeed.com/roamingrosie/6-aluminum-anthill-art-sculptures-that-will-blow-y-h90i?utm_term=.xeRnjjA3e#.xm54ZZk3b

Proverbs 6:6-8

Go to the ant, you sluggard;
consider its ways and be wise!
It has no commander,
no overseer or ruler,
yet it stores its provisions in summer
and gathers its food at harvest.

I think he means like take a metal cast of an actual nest and then turn that into an acrylic nest. Think like these but clear and hollow. I think it would be kind of cool, but hydration would be difficult.
https://www.buzzfeed.com/roamingrosie/6-aluminum-anthill-art-sculptures-that-will-blow-y-h90i?utm_term=.xeRnjjA3e#.xm54ZZk3b

I'm not saying it would be impossible to make a clear plastic hollowed out version of something like those aluminum casts, but it would be pretty dang difficult. I don't know of a manufacturing method that would be able to do that.

Perhaps you could manufacture small building blocks, like our current clear tubing connectors but smaller, that connect together securely somehow, and assemble one out of them. Hydration would definitely be a big issue though, and some of the species that are poor climbers might have trouble traversing it.

What would be really cool is a soil nest that allowed for optimal viewing. Hydration could be taken care of more easily and the ants could create their own living space and you could observe them doing all the digging. Stay tuned next year for something like this as we have been working on our design for this idea for several months now.

Unless you use some type of hard vinyl tubing and molded it into the shape of a nest,and somehow put an area for hydration. Hydration seems to be the key issue here. i reckon we could make it if we keep building on the design and all send in some hydration methods.

What if only half of the nest was acrylic and the other half was like Ytong or something. Also there could be a little sponge glued to the bottom with a little hole drilled into it. Would something like that work?

Some of our ideas for making something like this work fit into the category of a "do it yourself" project. I think these ideas are great and would be fun to do on an individual basis, but making something like this to sell to other people may prove to be too problematic.

Yeah the "small building blocks" I mentioned in my earlier post would be a modular approach. We could design a dozen or more different shapes/angles of interlocking tubing and several chamber options with 1-4 interlocking ports and then let people just create their own. We would most likely need some sort of base that supports the whole structure and that could also possibly provide hydration. We could also have a "hydration" module that could be connected as part of the structure in various locations.

It sounds really cool in theory. It would be quite a monumental project though. We will keep it on our list. We are still working on a few other projects right now that need to get finished up.